Bella is just the typical reluctant hero she enters a new world with a lot of insecurities and is mesmerized by the love interest that happens to be the vampire. All the questions that said that Bella didn't had any interest could be applied to MANY male heroes that don't particularly care about their grades or/and have any idea of what to do with life. But it looks like all women should want to be C.E.O or that all female character should make a feminist statement. I'm a woman and a feminist with a terrific caring husband and I do not like that feminism is taking the same route as chauvinism did where they have rules about what women should do and women should obey. I think there are as many women that want to run their own company as there are that just want to fall in love and have a family or that want both and all of them are right because is their life. I think that is one of the reasons Twilight has touched so many girls/women and SOME men is that Bella is just an average girl not a preteen superwoman and that is kind of refreshing on this time and day. Since have first experience on abusive men on my own family this is not it: doormats don't disobey EVER their mates out of fear while Bella keeps doing that till Edward learns to let her be wich is something an abuser doesn't do. They are always right and the woman is always wrong and if she doesn't agree then he will teach her whether by physical abuse or threats to her life. I'm not saying that Edward is perfect (he is also an 100 years old virgin idiot) but he lives on a world of predators that kill humans on seconds and that is unknown to Bella and since she is another idiot, she constantly place herself on situations that could have her killed. Now if in this world humans could find a way to kill vampires or protect themselves and Bella either never learns or Edward doesn't let her learn I would have a problem with this, but since this isn't the case what should Edward do? Let her get killed? Outside of making sure she doesn't die Sparklepire pretty much allows her to do whatever she pleases and he makes sure to let her choose if she would rather be with him or any other guy if that is what makes her happy and even tolerates the other guy hanging around. Abusive men would had her killed just thinking of this.

My friends, an English teacher, and a couple librarians thought that this is a wonderful, phenomenal, fantastic, great, superlative, awesome, et cetera series. The internet thought this series was offensive, poorly-written, plotless, and worth going into a frothing rage over. I've learned, over the years, to approach any book with no expectations at all. It's safer that way. What I have to say about each book: Twilight: It's "meh". It's So Average It's Horrible. Contemplation made me hate the abuse in Bella and Edward's relationship-term-used-loosely, but I couldn't notice that stuff while I was reading it because this book was so dull my brain literally shut down. New Moon: Jacob. I love Jacob. He's nice, he's cheerful, he has interests outside of Bella, and he makes me think that maybe it's not so horrible to create a character just so he can love another character. The ten blank pages, though are pure Narm, and this volume inspires a lot of Fridge Logic that I don't have room to discuss here. Eclipse: The writing was... better. There's an actual plot. Bella seems to occasionally show signs of internal conflict. That's the good stuff. The bad stuff was that Edward is back and more controlling than ever (this time I managed to be offended while actually reading the book). Poor Jacob has suffered Character Derailment. We all knew how it was going to end (actually, that's applicable to the entire series). Rosalie, however, gets backstory and becomes extremely sympathetic. Alice is beginning to get on my nerves. Please shut her up. Breaking Dawn: Yuck. Meyer breaks the laws of her universe. There's even more fridge logic. It's utterly squicktastic. Renesmee is way too perfect. I found myself actually liking the Vatica...I mean, Volturi. They make sure that the murderous vampires who would endanger not only themselves but all vampires and the vampires' primary food source behave. Why, though, are they so obsessed with Bella? Edward's mind reading and/or Alice's precognition would be way more useful to them than Bella's "love shield". TL;DR: They're useful and entertaining only for the Bile Fascination, seeing what all the hype is about, as an example of how not to write a book, and possibly as a narcotic.

As I said, it burns. This book has a poor plot, and the romance is even worse. I hate to agree with all of the crazy nay-sayers, but I do. I used to be a HUGE fan, but after a while... it starts to burn the skin. The Aesops in this book are downright painful. Rampant sexism, and disturbing paedophilia even! Before you start with the "imprinting is not necessarily sexual", it is! It is designed for reproduction, as such, it is SEXUAL. At no point does Bella make a serious choice for herself. Even the choice to be a vampire, her biggest planned choice, was not made by her. It was Edward who chose when and Edward who chose how.

Their romance is bizarre at best. I ask you, what do Bella and Edward talk about? I'll tell you- being vampire and human. Now that Bella's a vamp, what is left for that little relationship? They never even really bonded, other than Edward asking her some silly and pointless question. Never do they seem to spend time really getting to know each other. And their love was a completely instant thing. Bella fell in "love" with him because he was cute. Edward fell in "love" with her because she smelled nice. The characters are pretty interesting for the most part, and that I'll admit. The problem is that all of the really main characters are flat and dull. The side characters are actually pretty interesting. Bella is completely uninteresting, Edward was shooting for a angsty and complicated cynic, but completely missed. While Alice is described as bubbly and optimistic, I can't remember reading more than 2 moments of her optimism. She and Edward are both quite controlling too.

Another main issue is the mental abuse. Everyone says that it's there... because it actually is. I read through the profiles of the mental abuser and the victim. Guess which two characters fit almost perfectly.

On the whole, the series is alright if you only want some entertainment. If you read too deeply, be prepared for some wall banging. The worse part? All of the bad messages aren't intentional. They're just there! So don't hate on Meyer for all of the bad Aesops. She doesn't mean it. It just happened.

I am a Twilighter, and I love the series. I will wait for the rotten tomatoes to stop hurtling in my direction. I don't see why so many people have to bash on the series- it's a freaking series, not a political document! If you don't like it, why ruin it for those of us who do? I can see why Your Mileage May Vary on this series, but this is my opinion as a person who had a positive experience reading the book.

I am not a big fan of the human characters, Bella included, but I find the supernatural ones (vampires and werewolves) to be far more interesting. The vampires all come from different backgrounds and situations, so that makes them more interesting in the present. Take, for example, the effects of being the son of an Anglican pastor on Carlisle. This upbringing sticks with Carlisle through him believing that being a vampire has not cost him his soul, and that he still has the potential to be good. Rosalie's vanity originates in her beauty being used by her socialite parents to raise their status. In the Twilightverse, Meyer explains this as a part of Our Vampires Are Different, saying that each vampire's most prominent human quality was amplified in their conversion to a vampire. This helps build the Expanded Universe of the series by encouraging readers to build backgrounds for each vampire based on their personality.

The werewolves' world, as Edward states in Eclipse, is "like a soap opera." Each one of the pack members is affected by being a werewolf in a different way. Sam, the alpha wolf, is forced to abandon his relationship with Leah as a result of imprinting on Emily. Jacob's transformation into a werewolf instigated the conflict between him and Edward over Bella. Their attempts to reconcile themselves to their respective fates leads to their Expanded Universe. It gives a lot of insight into Team Jacob's case for their relationship to Bella.

In later books, the Vampire Universe expands into different countries and times as various vampires enter the plot, especially in Breaking Dawn (with vampires from all over the world coming to the aid of the Cullen Clan). It makes for a very interesting read to try and connect all the different characters with their histories and to compare them with other forms of vampires in literature (again, a case of Our Vampires Are Different).

I want to start with an admission: I did not go to this movie with an entirely open mind. I was not expecting to enjoy this movie. However, prohibited from snarking as I was, I figured I ought to give it a chance.

I'll start with the good points. This movie has an excellent soundtrack, featuring the diverse talents of Radiohead, Linkin Park, and Iron & Wine, among others. Carter Burwell's score is also great: dark yet emotive, very appropriate for a vampire romance, and highly listenable.

The pace of the movie is a vast improvement on the book; it's amazing what difference a little foreshadowing can make. The movie also has the decency not to skip over the action sequences. On screen, and accompanied by Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole", the baseball scene is actually pretty enjoyable.

The characters are a mixed bag. Bella is rather bland and uninteresting, but at least we aren't subjected to her constant wangsting about greenery as in the book. Edward is dark and brooding, but some of his lines are unintentionally silly, and his stalking of Bella is still creepy (more on that in a bit). Carlisle seems fairly cool, Rosalie is annoying, Alice is unexpectedly badass, and everyone else is rather forgettable.

Improved pacing notwithstanding, the plot suffers from many of same problems as that of the novel - namely, that it centres around a highly unrealistic and rather unhealthy seeming relationship between a doormat of a heroine and the vampire stalker who craves her blood. This is supposedly justified, because he's only bossing her about and following her around because he worries about her. Even if one overlooks the fact that this claim is frequently used in real life to justify the behaviour of abusive partners, the implications still seem to be that women are incapable of fending for themselves and need looking after, a rather dated viewpoint.

That said, it's probably best not to overanalyse what is, essentially, a light, fluffy romance intended for teenage viewers. Ultimately, this movie feels like a gothic, sparkly version of the Harry Potter movies, only with less interesting source material. It's certainly not groundbreaking, but on balance, it's not terrible, either. If you're curious about Twilight, but not masochistic enough to stomach Stephenie Meyer's prose, this is worth a look.

An interesting fact is that a lot of people don't read twenty books a week. Many, in fact, barely read one book in the course of an entire summer. Think of the average book as a meal, exceptional books as your favorite food... and Twilight as something from the Sonic down the street from me. That Sonic opened a few months ago, and I have to be blunt again when I say that the food is not what I'd call gourmet. Or even good. Yet, whenever I drive by, there is a ridiculously long line for it.

For those who don't read a lot, Twilight is Sonic. They've heard quite a bit about how amazing it supposedly is, and go in determined to enjoy it. Unlike Sonic, they have little to compare it to save for whatever books they had to read in school, which they probably don't remember entirely well (assuming that they even enjoyed them. I'm a major bookworm and English major, but even I've wanted to throw half of the assigned reading material I've had over the years through the nearest window). However, similar to how going to Sonic is where I live, even the mention of Twilight has become an almost foolproof way of starting a conversation, especially after the movie.

The Twilight movie, like the book it was based on, is junk food. I went into it expecting to enjoy it—what had kept me from going through the series had always been the writing style (if it can even be called that); and I'd always heard that The Host was nowhere near as enjoyable in terms of the story. My cousin, who had invited me to watch it with her, couldn't stop raving about it. So, I went in hopeful, and came out... very glad that I'd never forced myself through the book. There are no actual words that I can use to describe my reaction to it, so I'll simply go with 'urg'. I tried, I really did, yet in the end I spent most of the movie alternating between pointing out the flaws and climbing back onto the couch after I'd laughed myself off of it.

But much of the audience of the movie watched it because of their love of the books. For many of them, it was the equivalent of a large burger to the small one that had been Twilight in written format.

I've never liked burgers, just as I've never really seen the appeal of going to a place where you eat bad food in your car after watching someone bring it to you on rollerblades. Maybe that's why I didn't enjoy Twilight, either.

I first learned of the Twilight series through a TIME Magazine review of Meyer's lone non-Twilight book, The Host, and thought that maybe a "non-traditional" romance novel would be perfect for the slightly embarrassed male romance fan such as myself. The whole "supernatural" aspect...didn't really play in that greatly in the early books, other than to make things weirder. I have yet to see the movie of Twilight, but I can imagine that it would only appeal to a select few, most of whom have already read the book.

But fear not, unwilling drag-alongs: It Gets Better.

Yes, while the Purple Prose never completely stops, the romance does get toned down in later volumes. Eclipse has an awesome war between the "evil" vampires and the combined forces of the good vampires and the werewolves that aren't actually real werewolves so much as people infused with wolf spirits that allow them to shapeshift, and Breaking Dawn has the vampires gearing up for an all-out vampire revolution, the rebels against the authority figures. Also, Breaking Dawn gives the everyman Unlucky Childhood Friend Jacob Black, who comes off as much more sympathetic than unrealistic female dream guy Edward Cullen, the happy ending he so richly deserves. Furthermore, it actually spends more time being a vampire novel than it does being a romance novel that happens to feature vampires—which is probably why the majority of the fanbase didn't like it as much as the others. I think that the last two books will actually make for movies that have Multiple Demographic Appeal, and if you can get through the first two (probably a tougher task for a non-romance fan than for a multi-genre fan like myself), the end will provide something that traditional fantasy fans can enjoy.

My Ratings

• Twilight: 5/10
• New Moon: 7/10
• Eclipse: 9/10
• Breaking Dawn: 9/10

The series is BAD. It's not Batman and Robin bad - it's so bad that you can't even mock it. Meyer did no research, created a whole folklore for a real Native American tribe, and, frankly, raped the entire vampire mythos. This is not a series to be tossed away lightly. This is something to be thrown with great force. These vampires are not vampires. This science is not science. These aesops are not what you think they are. These words will make no sense until you have read the books.

On an additional note, the fanbase is by and large insane.

G'day.

Reading the book Twilight was an experience akin to physically eating the book Twilight. It leaves a disgusting taste that reminds you that not only does Meyer fail to achieve the genre she was intending completely, but she also used bad-tasting ink. The genre supposedly is a kind of gothic romance epic. I'd go as far as to say she's tried to emulate another story and just done it badly, but to my knowledge there isn't a gothic romance epic quite like this, so it feels like a bad emulation of something that doesn't even exist yet, which would be quite an achievement if it wasn't an absolute trial to read. She has at least tried to spew forth her ideas, and either those ideas were vomit to begin with, or they were lost while being translated to fourteen-year-old-girl.

None of the characters have realistic emotions or reactions to anything, especially the main couple. Edward is meant to come across as a grim cynic, but when compared to other vampires and his reasoning for this he appears more as a moron who wishes he understood how to act like a living being, something I believe he has in common with his author. Bella I can forgive. It is perhaps possible Meyer was intentionally making her dull and mindless to turn her into the "Everyman," a placeholder for the reader to experience her story. This was also a failure however, considering how the driving plot thread features this badly-written person.

I'm not going to complain about how the Vampire Mythos has been butchered, even though it has. Stephanie Meyer has attempted to create her own spin on them, but the unfortunate part of this equation is that she is Stephanie Meyer.

Did I mention the Purple Prose? Well, there's plenty of it, and it's not done well. If you've read Lovecraft before reading this, you'll understand the pain one feels seeing someone ruin it in the most pretentious way possible. I can put that down to Meyer not realising that the style of writing she has purloined is not the ultimate style that all writers strive for, rather an elegant strategy only those who know their stuff can pull off right.

Bottom line: Bad story, poor writing, undeserved fame.

I wasn't disappointed by this book, mainly because I had no expectations for it whatsoever. And, maybe it's because I thought it was going to be horrible that I kind of enjoyed it. Yes, Edward and Bella are thin, flat, one-sidedly perfect characters and whatnot. And yes, I can't go three pages without reading about how pretty Edward is. And yes, Edward sparkles. I am well aware that the book is trash. I just couldn't put it down. Ironically enough, If the book had been written about the minor characters, it may have been a better story. Carlisle's back-story, for example, was particularly engrossing.